NASA, Partners Set Space Station Construction Plan

NASA and its International Space Station partners have officials announced a new configuration - illustrated in this graphic - for the space station. The plan calls for 16 more shuttle flights to the ISS.Credit: NASA.

NASA and its
partner agencies have set a new plan to complete the International Space Station
(ISS) by 2010, delaying science utilization to make way for 16 shuttle flights
to piece together the orbital laboratory.

Assembly of
the $100 billion space
station is expected to resume in late August during NASA's STS-115 mission
aboard the Atlantis orbiter. But that spaceflight depends on the results of the space
agency's STS-121
return to flight mission expected to launch
in May, NASA chief Michael Griffin told reporters Thursday.

"We are
largely deferring utilization and we are paring logistics to the bone," Griffin
said during a press conference at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape
Canaveral, Florida. "We don't like that. But confronted with a choice between
having a high confidence to complete the assembly of the station...or utilizing
it heavily as we built it and possibly not finishing, we chose the former
course."

NASA has
until the end of the fiscal year in 2010 - when its three remaining shuttles
are due for retirement - to complete its role in the ISS assembly plan. Major
construction has been sidelined
since the 2003 Columbia
accident.

"We
appreciate the priority that all the partners, and especially NASA, have put on
the Columbus module," ESA director-general Jean-Jacques Dordain said.

The first
of three components for the Japanese
Experiment Module (JEM) - or Kibo - are slated for 2007, one flight earlier,
during the eighth scheduled orbiter mission, said Keiji Tachikawa, head of the Japan
Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The remaining two components are set for
the ninth and twelfth shuttle missions, he added.

The station's
crew size - limited to two astronauts since the Columbia accident - is expected
to return to a standard three-person complement with the arrival of ESA astronaut
Thomas
Reiter during the STS-121 flight this summer, Griffin said. By 2009, the
station should be ready to support its intended crew of six astronauts, he
added.

The new ISS
assembly plan also anticipates the arrival of unmanned cargo shipments aboard
Russia's Progress vehicles, ESA's Automated
Transfer Vehicle - the first of which is slated for 2007 - and Japan's
unmanned HTV supply ship.

Resuming
construction

NASA's three
space shuttles - Atlantis, Discovery and Endeavour - are the only vehicles
capable of delivering major components to the ISS, including the required
trusses, solar arrays and modules that make up the orbital laboratory.

Some
components have been dropped from the launch manifest, among them, a
Russian-built solar power platform and centrifuge module built for NASA by JAXA, though much of the station's intended hardware will fly.

"It's the
same space station [as envisioned], the hardware all goes up," Griffin said. "Our
early plans, which were better plans frankly, allowed us to utilize it while we
were building it."

During the two-
and one-half years NASA spent recovering from the 2003 Columbia accident,
Russia's Federal Space Agency supported the ISS with a lifeline of unmanned
Progress cargo ships and steady launches of crew-carrying Soyuz spacecraft.

The next
ISS crew, Expedition
13 commander Pavel Vinogradov and flight engineer Jeffrey Williams, is set
to launch toward the station on March 29 EST with Brazil's
first astronaut Marcos Pontes. The current crew, Expedition
12's Bill McArthur and flight engineer Valery Tokarev, will jettison a used
Progress
19 cargo ship early Friday, NASA officials said.

Perminov
said Russia's Federal Space Agency has agreed to draw on the station's U.S.-built
power system for some components through 2015 - in lieu of its solar power
platform - and has proposed plans to continue ISS operations into 2016 and
beyond.

"If NASA
decides to leave the [ISS] program after 2015, and if all the modules and
systems are in place, technically it will be feasible to continue the space
station," Perminov said, adding that all focus is currently on the upcoming
STS-121 mission.

Griffin said
that it was too early to speculate what NASA and the ISS program will do in
2016, adding that if the U.S. space agency holds to its present course, and no
major problems arise, there should be ample time to complete the station before
the shuttle fleet's 2010 retirement.

"We have
substantial schedule slack, in fact almost a full year, to complete the
station," Griffin said.